Reid rebukes Obama on Israel

The most powerful Democrat in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on Monday night publicly rejected President Barack Obama’s decision to use a recent speech to lay out aspects of a potential peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The place where negotiating will happen must be at the negotiating table – and nowhere else,” Reid declared in a speech to an annual gathering in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “Those negotiations … will not happen – and their terms will not be set – through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media.”

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When the Senate leader added, “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else,” the lights quickly came up on the vast audience and most in the crowd at the Washington Convention Center rose to their feet and applauded.

Among the thousands attending the AIPAC event, controversy is still swirling over Obama’s public suggestion last Thursday that Israel’s pre-1967 borders be the starting point for negotiations with the Palestinians. In his speech last week addressing the democracy movements roiling the Middle East and North Africa, Obama also suggested that Israel withdraw from Palestinian territory in phases, that Israel eventually withdraw all troops from the West Bank, and that the issues of Jerusalem and the right of return claimed by Palestinians be deferred until border and security issues are resolved.

Obama said in a speech to the same AIPAC conference on Sunday that his formulation did not suggest that Israel return to its outlines before the 1967 war. He noted that in last week's speech he mentioned that negotiations would produce “mutually agreed swaps” that would alter those borders - and that any Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized.

“If there is a controversy, then, it’s not based in substance,” Obama said Sunday, adding, “What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately.”

Nevertheless, Reid made clear Monday that he viewed it as unfair to ask Israel to return to its contours before the Six-Day War, when Israel conquered territory from Jordan, Egypt and Syria.

“A fair beginning to good-faith talks means that Israel cannot be asked to agree to confines that would compromise its own security,” Reid stated. He also seemed to suggest a limited role for the United States in any peace talks.

“The parties that should lead these negotiations should be the parties at the center of this conflict – and no one else,” Reid said.

A White House spokesman had no immediate response to a request for comment on Reid’s remarks.